NEW YORK—World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder has praised Polish President Andrzej Duda for his unequivocal condemnation of the antisemitic newspaper, Tylko Polska, which recently published a scurrilous article entitled ‘’how to recognize a Jew.’’
The article in “Tylko Polska” (“Only Poland”), a low-circulation, nationally distributed right-wing weekly, described how to recognize Jews based on their last names, personality traits and facial features.
Jewish women, it says, “lack the delicacy, modesty and sense of shame that are innate to Polish women.”
It goes on: “Because the whole world belongs to them … they are supposed to exist in every country, take power over nations and lead to the creation of one worldwide Jewish state.”
In an interview published Friday in The Jerusalem Post, Polish President Duda dismissed the article as ‘’sick and intolerable.’’
Poland, he said, is safer for Jews today than in other parts of Europe. “Situations such as this publication are absolutely marginal in Poland,” he said. “Nonetheless each and every one of them deserves condemnation, including the one in question.”
“Poles and Jews,” he continued, “have been living on this land together for almost 1,000 years. Who can tell how much Jewish blood is in their veins? Nobody knows, so to talk about how to recognize if someone is Jewish is ridiculous. These are sick people. Just sick. What it depends on is someone’s upbringing and the traditions and that is how you decide if you are Jewish or not.”
“This was no time for equivocation. The Jewish world is gratified by President Duda’s denunciation the Tylko Polska newspaper, which is a blot on Poland’s democracy. Such publications have no place in its or any society,’’ said Ronald Lauder.
He added : ‘’Tylko Polska is antisemitic and must either cease publication or change its course immediately. We can only hope that Polish legislation against incitement to racial hatred will be applied to the publishers of this scandalous hate sheet, which publishes content we have not seen since the Nazi Der Stürmer.’’
The newspaper is published by the extreme-nationalist propagandist Leszek Bubel who in 2005 was sentenced by a Polish court for publishing antisemitic statements in violation of the Polish penal code.